by Calista Skye
One after the other, they start to saunter into the remains of the village. They each react in the same way when they spot me. First they freeze, then they quickly look around for an ambush. Finding none, they frown and slowly, cautiously come closer.
It’s a ludicrous display of suspicion. And I know I would do exactly the same. Sweet Gold, are we really this painfully, transparently suspicious?
She chose her tribe over me. ‘I love those girls.’
She wasn’t joking. She genuinely picked the other Earth women over a lifetime of ruling her own planet and the universe. It barely seems possible.
“So you are here after all, Prince Caronerax,” the orange-hued Magriux observes, coming as close as he dares, always throwing glances behind him. “I thought it was a trap.”
“It may still be a trap, baron,” I point out with a smirk on my face. “It isn’t, but nobody would believe that.”
“How true,” the baron says. “So you are both on this planet, both the princes. Your brother is not a party to this possible trap?”
“The prince Yranox should not know anything about it,” I tell him. “If he finds out, it may all fall apart. But he’s still flying around in dragon form, far from here, as I myself did for days after I arrived. It is good to soar, baron. Have you tried it lately? No? Come with me, and you will. You will be above, you will be lord, you will be a wing-borne dragon, as you are meant to. Soon.”
Many other dragons are stalking towards us from every direction. I have to concentrate to control my intense dislike of them.
“If so, why wait for the others?” Magriux asks. “What you just said must mean there is a hoard to be found. A hoard is smaller when divided.”
“You know why,” I snort. “You know everything I told the others. We will attack a target, but it could be well defended, and we must be as many as possible. It is a rich target, and all our hoards will be legendary.”
He looks me up and down with sour suspicion. “You are injured. In many places. You look weak — your blue is pale. He who kills a prince becomes a prince himself, is it not so?” His eyes light up.
“Try it and find out,” I calmly tell him. “If you think you can defeat a prince of the royal line, then go for it.”
He doesn’t, of course.
There are hundreds of dragons in the large clearing that once contained Jennifer’s village, all coming slowly forwards while keeping the greatest possible distance to each other.
I want to groan in shame. I had no idea my kind could be so pitiful.
‘I love you,’ she said.
Emerak looks around theatrically. “Well? Is this your so-called target? Yes, very rich. Look at all the gray rocks! The dirt! The dead leaves! Truly, we will gather spectacular hoards here.”
“Yes, isn’t it magnificent?” I agree. “Observe the piles of rubble! The heaps of rotting wood! All just for us to share.”
“Knock it off, princeling,” he snaps. “None of us are in the mood for the leisurely shenanigans of the royal house. If your tale was false, then we will all rip you to pieces right here.”
I ignore the threat. “You have told them all about the target? The hoards we will find?”
“I have told them all you told me. And I have added, on my own account, that there is of course no way to tell if a word of it is true. Where is this target, and how do we get there?”
I draw breath to make sure I’m heard by all. “The target is close. Close in time, but not in space. Follow me, accept me as your leader and your king—”
Something small falls to the ground right beside me.
I freeze, then slowly stoop to pick it up.
When I touch it, it is as if it hypnotizes me.
It’s the simple, wooden pin that Jennifer made for my unruly hair to help me keep it out of my face.
My chest swells and aches. The poison is suddenly moving around in there.
She made this for me. Without being commanded to. Without me taking it from her. She made it specifically for me. Handed it to me with a smile and a cute little comment.
And at that point, I knew I could trust her. Like she had trusted me from almost the first moment.
The realization hits me like a bolt of lightning. I trust someone! I trust Jennifer.
I’m vaguely aware that the hundreds of dragons in the clearing are muttering impatiently. But it all fades into unimportance.
I trust someone.
When has a dragon ever trusted someone?
And why do I trust the only person who has injured me? Why is it her?
There is something bigger behind it. Something gigantic.
I have to find out.
This could be more important than anything else I have ever experienced. This could be more important than the plan.
I clench the little wooden object in my fist and frown at the assembled dragons. It’s as if I see them for the first time. And it is myself I am seeing.
“See how afraid you are!” I yell. “See how you keep looking around yourselves! See how tensely you stand there, unable to trust anyone!”
The Plood saucer lands a little to the side, huge and silent. Its side opens to the bright green interior.
All the dragons look around, puzzled and getting angry.
“What kind of trick is this?”
“It must be a trap!”
“Is your plan just to yell at us, princeling?”
“Where are the hoards you promised?”
I clench the little hairpin in my hand and look away, up at the treetops. I’m sick, and the only way for me to heal is to go to Jennifer’s home planet and take my chances on its inhabitants being able to heal me. Before I lead the plunder of their planet.
It’s as solid a plan as any dragon has ever had. Which is not saying much, but still the only hope I have.
This is big. This is big and much more important. I feel it with every inch of my being—
Hissing, I bend over as my my chest explodes in pain and fresh ichor starts dripping from the injury. I cough, and more ichor comes out of my mouth. The world spins around me, so I have to go down on one knee to not fall over.
“The time for entry is now,” the Plood leader says through some kind of device that amplifies his thin voice and makes it unbearably screechy. “Prince Caronerax, time is of the essence. The cargo appears to be ready to be stowed.”
I’m starting to understand Jennifer’s skepticism of the Plood. The ‘cargo’ is me and the dragons.
I get to my feet again. The Plood can do whatever they want. But with me gone, they won’t follow through on the agreed contract.
Clutching my chest, I stagger backwards, making for the edge of the woods. I have to find Jennifer, explore this mysterious idea of trust and then see where it may lead.
‘I love you,’ she said.
More ichor runs down my chin as I clench the hairpin and stumble into the jungle.
Behind me, the other dragons are left bewildered, and the last glimpse I get is the Plood closing the hatch and their saucer taking off again, then hanging uncertainly above the treetops.
“It’s a trap,” dragon voices seethe behind me. “He lured us here to take our attention away from that Inferior ship!”
That’s where she is, of course. I will go there and see her. She can explain what it is I’m feeling. It will be the last thing I do, but that’s how important it is.
28
- Jennifer -
There’s another army outside, with cavemen of all stripe colors surrounding the ship.
I can’t see any dragons at all. Perhaps the cavemen have defeated them all while we’ve been talking up here?
Boom!
Again and again the whole ship trembles in its very foundations as the cavemen pull the ram back on its huge frame and pull it forwards with thick ropes, giving it more speed. It’s made up of twenty thick tree trunks bound together to form a massive hammer that can swing back and forth.
Boom!
&n
bsp; Several of our own cavemen come up to the control room to check on us.
“We have to fight this,” Aurora says tightly. “They’ll crush the whole ship to shards. Everyone grab a gun and load it. They will do more damage against cavemen than against dragons. Let’s go! Let’s go!”
She would make a perfect marine sergeant, I reflect as we quickly make our way down to the garden level, where we keep all our stuff.
“Everything is ready,” Aurora continues. “Gunpowder there. Ammunition there. Wicks there. Matches there. One gun for each man, one for each girl.”
“Indeed,” Brax’tan says as he approaches, a tight smile on his face. He’s our general and the best leader among the cavemen. Which is reasonable, since he’s Delyah’s husband. “One weapon each. The women will stay inside, while we warriors deal with the nuisance outside.”
Nobody protests, not even Aurora. Brax’tan has great authority, and he’s always right.
There are several exits from the mysterious spaceship, and three minutes later, all the cavemen are outside and all the girls are right inside the various doors, aiming guns in case we see a face that’s not one of ‘our’ cavemen.
“They stopped banging,” Beatrice observes. She and I are kneeling down behind a big bank of instruments in the medical section of the ship, where alien machinery keeps manufacturing the Magical Space Gel that heals all wounds and burns and apparently all illnesses, too.
“They have other things on their minds,” I whisper unnecessarily. Nobody can hear us in here, but this is all pretty tense. Brax’tan might seem confident, but our guys are badly outnumbered.
Beatrice rests the muzzle of her heavy blunderbuss on the floor. “Do you think Kyandros and Aragadon might scare these guys away?”
“If they had their strength, they totally could,” I whisper. “But they are still recharging.”
“I guess they should save their strength for the other dragons,” Beatrice says. “Feels like the cavemen aren’t really the major problem here.”
“So weird, them all turning on us like that,” I ponder. “Even most of the guys in the army. I thought they were all content with having some kind of meaning in their lives. We never promised them wives, did we?”
Beatrice shrugs. “We don’t know what our own cavemen told new recruits. Maybe they dangled imaginary women in front of them. And anyway, they wouldn’t have to, probably. If you were a caveman, you would probably assume that more women were coming, even if nobody said it outright. At the very least, you would want to be close to the few women here, just in case. There are still unmarried girls.”
I nod. “Yeah, and maybe one of us would take a fancy to them. It would be worth it for any caveman to at least try. Like entering a lottery, I guess. But with only six unmarried girls left, and the spreading rumor that those would be leaving, I guess it was too much to expect that they would stay on our side. Suddenly, the lottery prize was gone.”
“Everything is up in the air,” Beatrice agrees. Nothing is certain. Except I thought of one thing. If the Plood are here, and they agreed to take you and your dragon and all the other dragons there — Earth must still exist and be fine, right? There was no mass invasion when we were abducted? The other saucers we thought we saw were really only some kind of visual effect?”
I shift the grip on the blunderbuss. My hands are sweaty, and the thing keeps slipping from my grip. “It might be a moot point if the dragons are on their way there right now.”
She sighs. “Yeah. We don’t even have that anymore.”
It’s been on my mind ever since I left Caronerax: this is bigger than me. The possible invasion of Earth by dragon is the worst disaster I can imagine. Nothing could be worse than that. An asteroid strike might wipe out most of the human life on my home planet, but probably not all of it. A dragon planet invasion could, if what we know about them is correct.
“This is the time”, I mutter to myself. “The cavemen are busy with other things, and probably the dragons, too.”
“What?” Beatrice asks. “I didn’t catch that.”
I stand up. “I said, there will never be another chance. I have to go and see if I can get Caronerax to change his mind. If he’s still here. See you later.”
I make my way around the console and open the door. It’s getting dark out there.
Perfect.
Beatrice scrambles to her feet. “Jennifer! Are you crazy? You’ll never survive out there alone!”
I give her a lopsided smile. “Probably not. But we are all screwed anyway. And I have to try this, or I’d never forgive myself. Bye.”
I hoist the gun and walk out of the door and into chaos.
29
- Caronerax -
I scurry through the jungle, bent double and breathing hard. I stumble over small roots and bushes, often falling, each time picking myself back up with more difficulty.
I see everything double, and there’s static in front of the world around me.
My chest feels like it’s going to explode, and the weakness is spreading.
Still, I clutch the hairpin.
A small part of my mind is railing against me. I’m running from the greatest opportunity I’ve ever had. The chance to heal, to expand my hoard, to be king. To leave my brother behind on a barren planet.
But that voice never becomes loud. The way I’m going now, there’s no healing. There’s no hoard. There’s no throne.
But there might be love.
It took me a while to figure it out. That trust, that comfort with Jennifer. That togetherness I had never experienced before. The urge to protect her, to shield her, to keep her safe.
She knew it. She knew what it was, and she said so. I was too puzzled and absorbed in my own concerns to see it.
I still have my hoard. I can still add to it. I can still be king.
But this is my only chance for something more, something that has turned my world inside out.
No dragon ever expects to feel it. Indeed, I doubt most of us know about it.
Royals are well informed, and as I often maintain, I’m the best informed dragon in the universe.
I have heard of love. I just hadn’t felt it.
Now I have, I can’t be without it.
And I need Jennifer. I need to know she’s safe.
From now on, I will keep her safe.
Branches and twigs whip my face as I rush past them, but I barely notice.
The other dragons are somewhere behind me, going slower in the darkening jungle. They may soon lose interest. But even so, they would come in this direction. The only really interesting place on this planet is the Inferior spaceship, Bune.
I stumble over a root and fall headlong into a bush, scaring up several medium-sized creatures that screech as they flee. I roll over and laboriously crawl to my feet, steadying myself on a sapling that bends under my weight.
With mild interest, I notice I leave a trail of ichor that glitters in the moonlight.
It doesn’t seem important.
I have to go on.
The only important thing is that I have to keep her safe.
30
- Jennifer -
I run across the flat, dry marsh, bent forwards to show as small a profile as possible.
Behind me there are sounds of fighting, with metallic clangs and deep-voiced yelling. I can’t tell who’s winning, and I don’t even want to know. Right now it feels like nothing matters all that much. All is probably lost, anyway. I probably don’t have a home planet anymore.
What are the chances he didn’t take off with the Plood back then, when I left him?
For some reason, I think he’s still here. I think his plan involved me, and it never crossed his mind that I wouldn’t want to come. He’d have to rethink. Maybe he’ll carry out his mission for his king, after all.
And if I’m wrong, and he left? Then we are totally screwed. And it looks like the dragons are gone, just like I’d would expect if they are now on the way to Earth to
lay waste to it.
So we’re probably totally screwed whatever happens. But I have to try.
I enter the jungle without slowing down. Of course, I have no idea where he might be, but the village seems like a natural place for me to go first. I’m not even sure I could find the place where that Plood ship had landed.
At least the moon is up, casting its eerie blue light on the jungle. If I now run across a raptor or one of those terrible insects, I can fire this blunderbuss right at their faces and hopefully scare them. The wick is lit, looking like a tiny firefly in the dark.
And hopefully I won’t knock myself out in the process. I’ll make sure to hold the blunderbuss in a different way, so if the barrel explodes, it won’t hit my face. It will impede my aim, but aiming with something as inaccurate as this is folly, anyway—
“There is one,” says a smooth voice from right in front of me.
“So there is,” another answers.
Dark shadows come towards me, towering over me.
Dragons.
“Where are you going, little female? Perhaps Uncle Emerak can show you the way? Or do you maybe want to be shown something else?”
One steps out into the light. An older dragon, but still beautiful and still scary.
I have to stop. “Get out of my way, or I will kill you,” I tell him, not easily frightened anymore. I’ve had much tougher dragons than this.
“Why such harsh words?” he asks with a soothing tone. “I simply want to help.”
“I don’t need your help, and I have no time for your crap. Get out of my way.”
“What shall I do with you?” says another dragon and steps forward, his hand stroking along my head. “It’s been a long time since I enjoyed the charms of a lesser female.”
“She’s mine,” the first one snarls. “Remove yourself, Bafinan, or I will tear you to pieces.”
“I know you will try, ancient and miserable as you are.”
“I am no older than you. But here I take precedence.”
“You do not, pathetic ogre. I will take her. And you can try to catch me.”
